MARLBOROUGH PINOT NOIR 2016

Perhaps the most texturally enticing of all the grape varieties, and a total passion for us at Mahi. Again our aim is to make wines of the earth, showing complex savouriness characters aligned with both red and black fruit notes.

This wine comes from THREE vineyards throughout Marlborough, all lending
different characters to the wine.

The Twin Valleys portion from the cooler Fareham Road area gives us the palate structure that we require, offering fineness to the back-palate. Fruit from Byrne vineyard this year gave some lovely delicacy, through bigger blacker fruit notes than we have seen before. The final portion came from Ward, approximately 45 kilometers south of Blenheim, providing great depth to the palate, with rich black fruit characters.

In the winery the grapes were predominantly destemmed before going to small vats for cold soaking prior to fermentation, allowing the exstraction of soft tannins and colour at the juice stage, rather than in the harsher alcoholic stage during and after fermentation. The grapes were then fermented solely with indigenous yeasts, offering a wide variety of flavours and helping us to attain great texture.

During fermentation the skins and juice were hand-plunged on average three times per day, with the temperatures peaking at about 34 degrees. When finished the wine was taken straight to French barriques where it sat for 18 months. The wine was then gently racked, blended, and lightly fined with organic egg whites before bottling.